23 ‘Crazy People’ Who Turned Out to Be Right
Daniel Bonfiglio
Published
03/26/2024
in
ftw
Time is the great equalizer, and history proves everyone either right or wrong. Some people who were once thought to be crazy were actually spot on, although not all of them lived to see their thoughts vindicated. As collected by Ask Reddit, here are 23 crazy people who turned out to be right.
Koutoku Wamura was the mayor of the Japanese town of Fudai for four decades but died in 1997 with one big failure to his name. Knowing the area's history of tsunamis, he ordered the construction of a gigantic sea wall that was long considered completely unnecessary and a gross misuse of resources. But in 2011, the Tōhoku earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed around 20,000 people in Japan. Virtually none of them came from Fudai however, thanks to Koutoku Wamura's sea wall.
The physicist and philosopher Ludwig Boltzmann also never got to see his theories confirmed and took his own life in part due to ridicule for his thoughts regarding the nature of matter. Only three years later, Ernest Rutherford released his model of the atom, showing that Boltzmann was completely correct.
Read about those men and others who turned out to be right all along.
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Sister Kenny and her physical therapy for polio victims. The treatment at the time was to lock up the affected limbs in braces or casts, leaving the patient crippled for life. Her idea of using hot compresses and gently moving the limbs took a very long time to be accepted by the medical establishment as she was a woman and "just a nurse." -
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Christine Collins, famously portrayed by Angelina Jolie in the movie Changeling. After her son was abducted the police "found" him months later and reunited them. But Christine was adamant that it wasn't her son Walter and was an imposter. Even though she had evidence to prove it, she was temporarily committed by the officer in charge of the case and even after the kid admitted he lied and wasn't Walter, it still took over a week to release Christine. -
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Koutoku Wamura. He was the longtime mayor of the Japanese town of Fudai, (1940s-1980s). While mayor, he learned that the town had been devastated in the past by tsunamis, and ordered the construction of an enormous sea wall. While other towns in the area also had sea walls, this thing was considered insanely high/overkill. The project was hideously expensive and he was relentlessly mocked. He died in 1997. In 2011 a tsunami struck Japan, killing 20,000 people. The sea wall worked as planned, protecting Fudai, and the town escaped almost untouched. -
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Ludwig Boltzmann. His equations and formulas explained the physical properties of matter, but as it went against the then accepted Laws of Physics, he was ridiculed and ignored for years while fighting for atom theory to be accepted. He took his own life just 3 years before Ernest Rutherford discovered the nucleus of an atom, proving Boltzmann’s theory. -
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Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton. A dingo really did eat her baby. -
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Barry James Marshall was one of the scientists who discovered that the bacteria H. pylori causes stomach ulcers. However, getting people to believe it was difficult. It was thought that lifestyle and excessive stomach acid were the main factors that lead to ulcers, so when he suggested that a bacterial infection could cause it, no one believed him. In response he infected himself with H. pylori by drinking cultures, which in turn gave himself stomach ulcers, and then treated the infection. He and Robin Warren received a Nobel prize for this discovery. -
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Ignaz Semmelweis. In 1846, Semmelweis proposed the idea that handwashing could prevent the spread of disease in hospitals. He was ridiculed during his time, sent to a mental asylum, and died forgotten by his peers. -
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Philippa Langley. She believed Richard III was buried under a carpark in Leicester. He was. -
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Jose Canseco was one of the first players to openly discuss how prevalent steroid use was in the 90’s 2000’s, and people dismissed his claims as being from a player on the decline just trying to stay relevant. -
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Rose McGowan. She spoke about people following her and ex-Mossad agents being involved. She was dismissed as insane. Turns out, Weinstein had an “army of spies,” he had following victims to keep them quiet, including the exact people she had described. -
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Jackie Stewart. He was sick and tired of burying his friends due to racing accidents, so he started advocating for safety-at the tracks, in the cars, and pushing for more qualified medical personnel. He once said “I’d be more popular if I would shut up and drive. Dead, but more popular.” Stewart was a 3x World Champion, for the record. Many of the things Stewart pushed for then are requirements at nearly every racing event today. -
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Martha Mitchell, wife of John Mitchell, Nixon's attorney general. Martha kept saying that there were suspicious things going on, but nobody listened to her. -
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Louis Pasteur. Other scientists thought he was crazy saying that tiny little creatures we couldn’t even see could be the cause of disease. -
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Harry Markopolos. No-one believed him when he said Madoff was running a ponzi scheme. -
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John Lydon of the S- Pistols. Tried to warn the world about the crimes of Jimmy Saville in an interview in 1978, and was banned from appearing on the BBC for his trouble. -
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Alfred Wegener, who first proposed “continental drift.” What would ultimately become plate tectonics. Geologists of the day considered him an outsider and rejected his theory. -
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The MANY British postal workers fired and prosecuted for stealing. Many were lifelong employees. Some developed mental health issues. This went on for almost two decades. Spoiler: it was a surveillance software glitch that went ignored for years. They were all innocent. -
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Lieutenant David Steeves. On May 9, 1957, he was on a mission to fly a new training jet, a Lockheed T-33, from Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato, California, to Craig AFB in Alabama. The plane was lost from radar and the Air Force couldn’t find the missing plane or pilot. The military declared Steeves dead, and that was that.That is, until 54 days later when Steeves emerged from the Sierra, having been found badly malnourished and still limping badly on swollen ankles. His story is heartbreaking. Accused of selling the plane to the Russians because they couldn't find the wreckage. Poor guy, he died before they finally found the evidence that his story was true all along. -
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Topher Grace. Got a lot of flack on That 70s show for being antisocial and cold towards his castmates. Turns out they weren’t great people. -
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Sister Kenny and her physical therapy for polio victims. The treatment at the time was to lock up the affected limbs in braces or casts, leaving the patient crippled for life. Her idea of using hot compresses and gently moving the limbs took a very long time to be accepted by the medical establishment as she was a woman and "just a nurse."
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